The Government is facing a legal challenge from the human right organisation Reprieve over its use of a secretive law that can be deployed to authorise the involvement of British intelligence officers in torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

Amnesty International has welcomed a decision by the High Court in Belfast to overturn a decision by the Police Service of Northern Ireland not to take further steps to identify and prosecute those responsible for the torture of the 'Hooded Men'.

Rebecca Hilsenrath, Chief Executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has written to the Home Secretary about the concerns over Brook House Immigration Removal Centre raised by a recent BBC Panorama programme.

Government plans to abandon its European Convention on Human Rights obligations during future conflicts are unlawful, incoherent, wilfully misleading and designed to protect the Ministry of Defence from scrutiny, the civil liberties and human rights organisation Liberty has warned.